My Garden Blog: A website to document the challenge of growing a variety of perennials in a northern Canadian climate. I post plenty of pictures of my gardening projects and welcome comments. La Ronge, Saskatchewan is in Zone 1b (USDA zone 2a), sitting on the Canadian shield at 55° 06' N latitude, 105° 16' W longitude.

Subscribe To

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Welcome Sign and Guerilla Gardening

Welcome to La Ronge, in the future sometime, perhaps. I'm not alone in wondering when our town's welcome sign will be finished.The sign itself is quite attractive, having been put up last year. It seems that a local committee was given the task of landscaping around the sign, starting last summer. However, the landscaping seems to have come to a standstill. I notice some fresh-looking wood-chip mulch sitting to one side of the sign, which makes me hopeful. What is the plan with the rows of rocks, though?With only a few minutes and a good computer program, I can transform this welcome sign into something that represents the effects of global warming on the Canadian subarctic...click on the picture to see the high-resolution larger picture. Do you like the bougainvillea, banana tree and bromeliads? In an attempt to add some greenery to the dusty mess at the side of the highway, I threw some poppy seeds on the heap of garbage and dirt left at a snow dump site.Good luck, little seeds. If just a few of these seeds grow to flowering plants, they might have a hope of naturalizing, as poppies self-seed. This was my act of "guerilla gardening" for the year. RLM thinks I am crazy. To read more about this social trend, there is a UK website that documents guerilla gardening moments and "weapons of mass beautification".